Zaahid Allie, Data Analytics Consultant at Insight Consulting.

Most businesses understand the competitive advantages of investing in a comprehensive data analytics solution, yet not all of them actually get to enjoy a full return on their investment. 

This is because once a preferred solution has been implemented, extracting the most value from a business intelligence (BI) solution, for example, lies in comprehensive user adoption and engagement.

Unfortunately, in reality, many businesses fail to see the true value of their solutions due to poor user adoption and engagement. 

In practice, user adoption is nowhere near as high as it should be, which is tragic because businesses invest a lot of money in their new tools and products.

There are a number of factors behind poor user engagement. Many staff feel overwhelmed by information. 

In our engagements, we have found that users are often faced with what they see as an “information dump” when trying to learn new BI tools. Naturally, once sufficiently trained on a solution, navigation and use becomes intuitive, but when users encounter an overwhelming amount of information, it often leads to disengagement.

In addition, one of the key areas often overlooked in BI tool training is the fact that users of a system often don’t know how to use it within the context of their jobs. 

So even though they may technically know how to navigate the tool, their data literacy skills are lacking, and so they don’t understand how to use it to get the information that they need to analyse and make data-informed decisions in their day to day jobs. 

Training knowledge workers to use the tool, but leaving out the training on how to apply it contributes to the disengagement.

Disengaged staff members certainly won’t give a highly powerful BI tool the attention it deserves and once the initial implementation and training is complete, many users tend to revert back to old habits. 

Of course, the great irony is that these exact old habits led to the business investing in the new solution in the first place!

Disengaged staff will go back to using far less efficient methods such as working on spreadsheets once implementation is complete and the initial setup training is done. 

The outcome is that companies do not realise the full return on their investment, and they certainly don’t get the level of actionable insights from their data that they are expecting.

The challenge, then, lies in driving sustained user adoption, overcoming information overload, breaking old habits and maintaining continuous, relevant engagement with the new BI solution over time. 

People, processes and technology must exist in unison and not in silos. The newest, best and most cutting-edge technology will do very little unless there is a healthy data culture within the business.

Driving behaviour change requires an understanding of human psychology. We enjoy a sense of community, we thrive with healthy competition and we need to form habits that are conducive to being productive. This is where the concept of gamification comes to the fore.

Very simply put, gamification involves the application of game design principles and elements in non-game environments in order to engage and motivate users. 

Let’s take a closer look at some of the elements of game design: Rewards, badges, feedback, leaderboards, points, challenges, winning streaks and much more. As people, we respond to this. Ever watched someone become “hooked” on a game?

It is evident everywhere. Nike Run Club and Peloton have used gamification to drive engagement with fitness and wellness activities. Uber uses gamification for its drivers to keep them engaged and motivated. 

Uber’s system tracks a driver’s efficiency and unlocks various levels of rewards and opportunities based on points earned, for example, by completing trips during off-peak periods. While fast fashion may be under the spotlight for a number of reasons, large international platforms have turned gamification into an art to drive more purchases from consumers.

What does any of this have to do with data and BI? At Insight Consulting we needed to find an innovative and effective way of engaging users with powerful analytics tools, and the concept of gamification in training emerged as the answer. 

It taps into fundamental human psychology around community, competition and habit-forming behaviours such as streaks. It provides the opportunity to drive user engagement.

Ultimately, gamification, when used in the context of facilitating behaviour change and engagement with data analytics tools, drives a healthy data culture and return on investment for businesses. 

ROI is obviously imperative, but what’s even more exciting is that gamification can influence a culture shift in the organisation, making the adoption of new tools and processes more organic and enthusiastic.

The theory is clearly sound, but we found that we needed to embed gamification elements directly into the training experience within the BI tool. This enabled us to include key features such as guided learning paths, in-app activities, progress tracking, leaderboards and more.

Organisations can, and should, extract the most value from their data analytics investments. A culture change and ongoing engagement, built into the solution’s training experience, represents a compelling opportunity to boost ROI. Gamification has come to analytics... Ready, set, go!